Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

From the time he was a child, Tesla was always considered eccentric. During
his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered
a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before
his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. The flashes and images caused
Tesla great discomfort, and by the time he reached his teens he had taught himself
to repress them from occurring except in certain times of stress.

Shortly after his graduation from high school, Tesla suffered a devastating
bout with cholera and nearly died. He was bedridden for nine months, and doctors
announced that he would not live much longer. Tesla underwent another debilitating
trauma a few years after recovering from cholera. This time, the nature of the
illness and its causes were a complete mystery. Tesla's physical senses,
which had always been remarkably acute, seemed to go inexplicably into overdrive,
paralyzing him with an overabundance of sensation.

Tesla shunned physical contact with other people, with a special aversion
to touching hair. To avoid shaking hands with people he met, he lied that he
had injured his hands in a laboratory accident. He apparently never took part
in a romantic relationship of any kind. A female acquaintance who grew enamored
of Tesla reportedly once took the initiative to kiss him, causing the startled
inventor to flee in agony.

Tesla asserted that it was not until he reached adulthood that he discovered
he was an inventor. He discounted his early years as a time of undisciplined
impulses, entirely lacking focus. But he did invent a wide array of creations
and schemes as a child. The young Tesla created a remarkable machine powered
by another natural energy source: June bugs (or, as Europeans call them, May
bugs). He glued sixteen of the live insects to the blades of a small windmill-like
structure, and they set the rotor spinning vigorously in their vain attempt
to fly away.

Tesla began his college education at Graz Polytechnic Institute, pursuing
studies of the topic that fascinated him above all others: electricity.
Tesla was an extraordinary student who frequently enraged his professors, questioning
the technological status quo with an insight that surpassed his instructors.
He rebelled most stringently against the acceptance of direct current as the
sole means of delivering electrical power.

It was plain to him that DC was inefficient and incapable of adequately transmitting
power over long distances, and there had to be a better way. There was talk
of a theoretical "alternating current" system, but no one had figured
out how to make it work. AC was frowned upon as a fanciful dream by the scientific
establishment, in much the same way as cold fusion is regarded today. Tesla's
merest suggestion of AC brought scorn in his lecture halls, but he was never
discouraged enough to abandon the enticing riddle.

In the middle of Tesla's sophomore year of college, his father was felled
by a stroke. Nikola returned home, and his father died soon after. Tesla never
returned to the Polytechnic Institute. Lacking funds for tuition, he took a
job at a government telegraph office. Tesla despaired for his interrupted education,
but held on to his dream of becoming an electrical pioneer. It was at this time
that Tesla endured his ordeal with hypersensitivity that reduced him to a bedridden
invalid. Considering the depressing turns his life had just taken, the bizarre
affliction could possibly have been psychosomatic in origin. Whatever its cause,
when Tesla finally emerged from the prolonged fugue state, he was armed with
a powerful new insight on how alternating current could be successfully attained.

His great mental leap was this: two coils positioned at right angles and
supplied with alternating current 90 out of phase could make a magnetic field
rotate, with no need for the cumbersome commutator used in direct current motors.
Tesla knew it would work without even having to build it and test it. Constructing
it mentally and letting it run in his mind was proof enough for him. This was
Tesla's method for developing inventions throughout his career: no journals,
no blueprints, no prototypes.

Tesla now possessed the answer, but the problem of putting it into practice
remained. In 1882 he found employment with Continental Edison Company in Paris,
distinguishing himself as a fine engineer, and, while on assignment to Strassburg
in 1883, he constructed, in after-work hours, his first induction motor. In
1884 Tesla was invited to come to America and work for the Edison Company and
redesign Edison's machines. Edison made him work from 10:30 am to 5:00 the
next morning, seven days a week. Even though Tesla did not believe in Edison's
direct current motors he worked hard to improve them.

Edison told him if he could do that he would give him a bonus of $50,000.
Tesla worked day and night because the $50,000 would let him set up his own
lab and work on his inventions. He came up with twenty-four new designs to replace
the old ones of Edison's. Edison was delighted with the results but did
not pay Tesla the $50,000 he had promised. When Tesla finally asked him about
it, it is said that Edison told him, "Tesla, you don't understand our
American humor." That is when Tesla left the Edison Co. and they became
rivals. A group of inventors approached him and offered him a chance to form
a company of his own: "the Tesla Electric Light Company"

Tesla developed a light that was simpler, more reliable, safe, and economical
than what was being used. He patented the lights and they were installed throughout
the town. This was a great success, however, all of a sudden the investors took
over the company from Tesla. Now, once again, he had no job, no money, and he
didn't even own the patents on the things he had developed. He couldn't
get an engineering job, so, for a year Tesla worked as a laborer on street gangs,
digging ditches and building streets. However, he worked on his inventions during
this time and received several more patents. A lot of his inventions didn't
really have any use at the time, but became useful years later. For example,
he developed a way to transform heat directly into mechanical or electrical
energy. This process was "rediscovered" in the 1970's and Tesla
was never given credit for it. He said that it was the most depressing time
of his life. He even planned on committing suicide on his upcoming thirtieth
birthday, at the stroke of midnight.

Before that could happen, A. K. Brown of Western Union Telegraph Company learned
of Tesla's plight. Aghast, Brown was determined to restore the genius to
a worthy place, and offered to furnish him with a laboratory of his own. And
what's more, Brown wanted Tesla to pursue the possibilities of alternating
current. Granted a blessed salvation, Tesla immediately went to work assembling
his AC dynamo at last. It functioned in reality precisely as it had all those
years inside his head.

Tesla demonstrated his invention in a heavily publicized
lecture, and instantly became the toast of the engineering community. In 1887
George Westinghouse, who owned most of the electric companies and was a competitor
of Edison, went to see Tesla and his alternating current motor. Westinghouse
was kind of like Edison in that he was ruthless, but Tesla liked him. Tesla
sold his patents to Westinghouse for $60,000 (only $5,000 in cash and 150 shares
of stock), and went to work for Westinghouse. He was also supposed to get $2.50
for every horsepower of electricity sold. If that had happened he would have
been a billionaire! The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between
Edison's direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current
approach, which eventually won out.

Tesla soon established his own laboratory, where his inventive mind could
be given free rein. He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that
later were to be used by Wilhelm Röntgen when he discovered X-rays in 1895.
Tesla's countless experiments included work on a carbon button lamp, on
the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of lighting. Tesla gave
exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lighted lamps without wires by allowing
electricity to flow through his body, to allay fears of alternating current.
The Tesla coil, which he invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and
television sets and other electronic equipment. The typical frequency range
is from 100 kHz to 1M Hz with typical voltages of several 100kV.) That year
also marked the date of Tesla's United States citizenship.

Tesla became known for the lectures at which he demonstrated his inventions
and concepts with a theatrical flair. Many attendees were laymen who had little
comprehension of what Tesla said, but were mesmerized by the bolts of lightning
that leapt from his ominously humming coils, and the unwired light bulbs that
lit at the touch of Tesla's hand.